


living in between

by liraels



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Character study???, F/F, murder is sex is murder, set during season 1, they are so gay and fucked up you gotta love em
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24626776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liraels/pseuds/liraels
Summary: “You chopped his dick off,” Eve says, finally. Villanelle can only laugh.“My mistake,” she says, “I was aiming for his kidneys. I can be very careless sometimes.”~A series of interludes.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 17
Kudos: 150





	living in between

**Author's Note:**

> some interludes during season 1 because i did a rewatch and...turns out i cannot keep my hands off these two. god, they were so young back then, and so deliciously fucked up

Villanelle isn’t sure what it is that makes her slash the target’s throat. Nor is she sure what makes her use the same long knife – glistening with blood, tantalising – to stab the nurse through the heart when she screams. The armed officers are more of a struggle, but they still go down quickly and before they can draw their guns.

 _Make it look like a suicide_ , Konstantin said, but Konstantin has never known how to have any fun. Villanelle thought about listening to him. She planned something much more subtle, something to do with the handful of pills in her pocket.

But then Villanelle stood beside the target’s bed, watched the rise and fall of her chest and the pallor of her checks and – and she just needed to kill her. _Properly_.

It might be something to do with the woman she saw in the bathroom. The one with hair just like Anna’s – bigger, curlier, even. Villanelle didn’t wonder who the woman was or why she was there, she merely appreciated the sight before her while it lasted. She hopes her hair advice was heeded. Anything more that Villanelle glimpsed in that woman’s gaze, anything behind surface-level curiosity…well, it doesn’t matter. She’ll never see her again.

She didn't come here for chance encounters in bathrooms. She’s on the clock.

It’s not even a minute later, then, that she scorns the pills and the suicide plan and instead draws a knife under the target’s chin. Maybe she just needs to drench her hands in blood, feel it hot and wet and pulsing. Maybe the thick arterial red pooling in her palms will stop her thinking about tangled locks between her fingers. 

Eve can’t stop thinking about death.

It’s not suicidal, or morbid. Because it’s a very _particular_ death she can’t stop thinking about; it’s a specialty hairpin through the eye in a bedroom during an anniversary lunch in Tuscany. Quick, and sudden, and blackly exquisite.

She’s lying awake, staring at the crack on the ceiling and pretending there’s no weight in the bed next to her. She’s doing laundry, cycling methodically through the ordinary tasks that sustain her days. She’s on the train, sandwiched between faceless commuters, gaze skimming about the carriage but taking in little.

She’s living but, really, she’s doing it inside her head. She’s living in the imagined moment of sudden, surely excruciating agony as the hairpin is buried in her eye, digs through grit and soft tissue, and finally pierces just an inch or so in her brain. That inch is somehow…delicate, a semblance of closeness, of tender familiarity. 

She focuses on the hairpin. It could be wielded by anyone. It’s just a weapon – floating, disembodied.

Except at times like the present, late nights lying in bed. It’s after midnight, Niko is asleep, and Eve stares through the gloom at the crack that runs from the light fixture towards the corner of the ceiling and thinks about the hand that holds the hairpin.

Very occasionally, after a while, she’ll even let herself think about the arm attached to the hand, all bone and slender muscle. She’ll follow the arm up to the shoulder, and think briefly about what clothes it – something expensive, that goes without saying. Something light and airy, fit for a Tuscan summer’s day. Something that billows and drapes over collarbones and breasts and ribs and hips.

Now, she traces a long neck – tendons tight in concentration, in passion – to the curve of a chin, the soft fall of hair framing a face she remembers like a photograph. When it’s very dark, very still, and very quiet – when it’s 3am or thereabouts, as the blinking alarm clock tells her – she thinks about the hand that clutches at Eve’s skull for leverage as the hairpin nestles itself deeper, deeper.

Eve calls it empathy.

It’s only natural, after seeing the autopsy photographs, reading the statements from the witnesses who found the man’s body. She feels for him. She imagines herself in his shoes. It’s only human.

Except when Niko is in the deepest phase of sleep – when she can barely hear him, can pretend he’s not there – Eve sometimes imagines the door cracking open with a slight whine of hinges. The soft padding of footsteps, slow and measured, like the intruder has mapped the room and its occupants and knows exactly where to step in the dark. She imagines a sudden hand curled around her ear, fingers pressed into the back of her skull, and then – _stab_ , a hairpin buried to the tips of steady fingers in Eve’s eye socket.

It doesn’t hurt like pain, in the dream. It hurts like – like intimacy.

Eve waits for a long while, eyes blank and staring at that jagged crack in the ceiling, until she lets herself imagine the look in the eyes of the woman who holds the hairpin. She’s held herself back from this for hours as she’s lain awake, dwelling on every other inch of the scene, saving the best until last.

It’s fucked up, Eve knows. It’s certainly not empathy.

The alarm clock blinks red, a car revs on the street outside, and Eve finally conjures up the image of those eyes. Hard, closed-off, but also wet and wide and stirring as they look back at Eve. A mouth, half-open, jaw tight but lips slack as if in the throes of ecstasy.

It’s at this point when Eve shuts it down. She scrunches her eyes shut and concentrates on Niko’s slow breathing, the dip of the mattress beside her. She falls asleep, eventually.

But the next night is the same. Eve can’t stop thinking about death, and hands, and hairpins. Eve can’t stop thinking about _her_.

Pamela is a decent distraction.

She’s eager and unpractised. She’s willing to answer to ‘Eve’ and to wear the clothes Villanelle gives her. Most of all, she has _great_ hair.

Villanelle thinks this will get it out of her system – whatever ‘it’ is. Konstantin would call it _a schoolgirl obsession_. He has a daughter, so maybe he would know. Villanelle calls it a crush. Normal people have crushes. They watch them, hang around them, look for excuses to be near them, send them gifts. Villanelle can do that. Villanelle can be a normal person with a crush.

Normal people with crushes might also look for other people, people to distract them from the true object of their affection. That’s what they do in American movies, anyway. It sounds alright to Villanelle, and for a time Pamela is enough. She lives out a fantasy for a day and it’s enough.

“Act like I’ve been naughty,” she says to Pamela, taking a break from kissing down her neck. “You’re the good guy, I’m the bad guy.”

“Oh, um…” Pamela is breathless.

“You’ve caught me. Now, what are you going to do with me?”

“I suppose I’ll…I’ll punish you? Is that what people say?”

Villanelle stills in the middle of unbuttoning Pamela’s – _Eve’s_ – shirt. It’s not just Pamela’s uncertainty that makes her stop. There’s something wrong, something off about it.

“You’ve been very bad,” Pamela says, a little stronger, though betrayed by her shaking hands, “and I’m going to punish you.” 

Villanelle quiets her with a kiss. “No, you can stop that. I’ve decided I don’t like it.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“We’re going to have sex now.”

“Ah. Sure. Great!”

And they do, but in the end Pamela isn’t the distraction Villanelle wished her to be, because even though she’s here and present with her dark curly hair and her American accent and those plain, ugly clothes…Villanelle still thinks about Eve, and wonders if she’s misjudged her. She wonders if Eve really would want to punish her, if Eve would think she’s bad, and a small voice asks: _what if she doesn’t? What if she doesn’t?_

Eve's at the snack table, stuffing her face with wake-sandwiches — because they're always the same at wakes, and you never get the type anywhere else, all dry white bread and way too much cucumber — when Carolyn corners her.

“Eve,” she says, “I think we're due a little chat.”

Eve's in an awful mood, and surely Carolyn can't blame her for that, not today, so she scoffs. “You think?”

“Perhaps somewhere a little more...private.” Carolyn glances around at the other guests, at Niko chatting away in the corner.

“Whatever. I'm bringing this.” Eve snatches the plate of wake-sandwiches before following Carolyn down the hall and into the only empty room they can find, which happens to be a laundry.

Eve hauls herself on top of the washing machine, sets the sandwiches on her lap and starts to peel off all the bits of cucumber.

“I think we need to chat about your motivations,” Carolyn says.

“My motivations?”

“For doing this job. For refusing to quit, even after...well.”

“Bill.”

“Yes.”

Eve feels her lips tighten, brow scrunch. She directs the frown at the sandwiches instead of at Carolyn.

“I want to find her,” she says.

“Yes, that is the job. What I am asking is _why_.”

Carolyn is too good. Eve nibbles on a cucumber-less sandwich — now just lettuce and margarine — before saying, “I don't want to lose this job.”

“And you won't. But I make it a point to understand exactly what makes my employees tick. Nothing you say will compromise you. Let me tell you, rational and well-adjusted people are rarely cut out for intelligence work.”

Carolyn leans back against the sink, arms crossed, statuesque and unreadable. Eve just looks at her for a minute before she realises she's been insulted.

“Are you saying I'm —”

“Please just answer the question, Eve.”

Eve tears the rest of her sandwich in half, then again, then again. All the excuses, the lies she's told Niko, they won't convince Carolyn. So, she shrugs, looks at her mutilated sandwich, and tells a singular truth: “I feel alive.”

Carolyn nods, once. Eve thought she would need more of an explanation, but this seems enough for her, because she pats Eve timidly on the shoulder and then she's gone.

Eve stares down at the crumbs and cucumber bits in her lap and thinks about all the lies, all the half-truths and omissions she’s spilling into her life and all over everyone who's unfortunate enough to share it with her. All the reasons she can't quit this job that aren't just excitement or exhilaration or even revenge.

Her cheeks burn, warmed by the guilt boiling up inside her throat. She goes home, and can't stand to look Bill's wife in the eye when she wishes her goodbye.

“I'm sorry, no, we don't want any—”

“Hello, Eve.”

There’s a burst of static, and Villanelle imagines Eve's breathing suddenly quickening, her chest heaving upon hearing Villanelle's voice down the line.

“Are you having a nice evening?” she continues, pressing the phone hot against her ear. As she hears Eve's breaths settle into a slower rhythm, she tips back on the bed and imagines she's in one of those high school movies: the lovesick girl calling the hard-to-get crush.

“How did you get this number?”

“The phone book. Yes, before you ask, I am old enough to know what a phone book is. Who did you think I was?”

“...we usually only get...telemarketers, on the landline. Sorry.” The _sorry_ sounds accidental, but it makes Villanelle smile.

“No need to apologise.”

There's a lull for a few seconds, but Eve's breaths still stutter and fog through the phone. Villanelle waits — for Eve, she has decided she will be patient. For the first time, probably ever. Eve is _special_.

“You chopped his dick off,” Eve says, finally. Villanelle can only laugh.

“My mistake,” she says, “I was aiming for his kidneys. I can be very careless sometimes.”

“No, you can't.”

“Oh?”

“I...you're not careless. You're precise. Thorough. Sometimes you’re messy but it’s always on purpose. I’ve seen it.”

Now, this is _delightful_.

Villanelle rolls over onto her stomach and kicks her legs back into the air before she replies, “You've been _watching_ me.”

“I’m going to hang up.” Eve's tone is hard, cutting. But she doesn't hang up.

“What else have you noticed about the way I kill?”

Villanelle imagines Eve looking at her with those discerning eyes, twisting her lips together as she considers the question.

“I’m hanging up,” Eve says again, but, again, she doesn't.

“No, you're not. I think you want to tell me. I think you want me to tell you that you're right.”

There's another stretch of silence.

“Niko will be home soon. I have to go.”

“Awh, but there's still time to have some fun, right?”

“No. There's not. Goodbye, Villanelle.”

But there’s no dial tone. Villanelle sighs.

“You probably know that I like variety,” she says, because Eve is definitely still there. “You know that I never do the same kill twice. That I like to try different places and to try on different people. And I think you know that I like to look them right in the eyes as they die. I watch the life drain out of them and it feels _so_ _good_ , Eve.”

Is it Villanelle's imagination, or have Eve's breaths shortened again, rising waves of air and static?

“Did you know all of that?” Villanelle asks.

“Yes,” is the reply, “I think I did.”

The line cuts out. Villanelle buries her face in the pillow and smiles.

Niko’s leaving Eve on read. _We can talk when I get home_ , is her last message. Before then: _Call me back when you can_ and _I miss you already._

Eve isn’t sure if she means any of it. It’s like reflex – she knows she’s supposed to say these things, to make these careful overtures of apology and love. She’s _supposed_ to. Fifteen years has to mean something.

She tips back the icy dregs of her gin and tonic and thinks about going back to her hotel room, where she’ll surely lie on the bed and stare at the stucco ceiling and think about – well. Niko’s not here to distract her. There’ll be no soft snores, no accompanying weight in the mattress.

She has a whole night, free and clear, to do whatever she likes. To think about whatever she likes. She orders another gin.

She can't help picking up her phone intermittently throughout the evening, but on her third drink Niko still hasn’t called or replied. She keeps checking, though, because she’s supposed to, and tries to insist that the worry in her gut is for her marriage.

On drink three, she switches to wine, swirls it around her teeth and lets it sink like velvet into her gums. On drink four, she’s just tipsy enough to think consciously about Villanelle. She’s always there somewhere, spends all day drifting in and out of shadowy corners of her thoughts, sometimes stepping into a spotlight and giving Eve a thrill. But now, she thinks of Villanelle like its an action, not a reflex but a way she decides to spend her time. She thinks about Villanelle, and she _means_ it.

What she can’t stand is Villanelle’s absence. She doesn’t need her here, not physically, just – the knowledge of her. The awareness that she is _somewhere_. That Eve only gains that awareness when Villanelle kills is not lost on her – but she takes a gulp of her fifth drink and realises she doesn’t care. Or, she does care, she definitely cares that she’s having a conversation with a psychopath through brutal assassinations across the continent. The lives that conversation costs, though...do they even matter?

Admitting that is brutal, even softened as it is by the alcohol. The last sip of wine swirls numbly at the back of her throat, and she finally goes up to her room. Three glasses of water and a preventative ibuprofen clear the fog a little before she settles down to sleep. And think.

These past weeks, Eve has been the recipient of a one-sided conversation in a language of hairpins through eyes and poison in blood and blades across throats. She lies awake yet another night and wonders what it might be like to talk back.

_Hi, baby. Sorry for standing you up_

Villanelle almost sends it. She even adds some emojis – frowny face, gun, two pink hearts. But when the plane lands and Anna’s phone picks up some wi-fi, she deletes the message instead.

Because she doesn’t want to talk to Eve. She just wants a bath. She just wants to go to bed, sleep for ten hours, wake up tomorrow and maybe masturbate away the morning thinking about how Eve looks with her hands around a gun. She wants to get out of these clothes, buy a nice suit, and wear it on her next job. She wants to kill someone and get paid for it and have everything be _normal_.

She gets a coffee on the way to her apartment – Starbucks, double shot, and that’s what hammers it home for her. She feels like _shit_. The coffee makes it worse, which is why she bought it. First Nadia, then Anna, then Konstantin – she _should_ feel like shit. She’s worked hard enough and she fucking deserves it. She stews in it, and it’s almost nice to feel something – even if that something is draining, deadening, three-days-in-prison, log-to-the-head, Anna bleeding out, Eve saying _come with me_ , fucking exhausting, painful, stupid, stupid, stupid, awful _shit_.

Her vision is buzzing by the time she slumps up the stairs to her apartment. The lock is already loose and the door gives way to a solid ram. She’s thinking about the feeling of silk on her skin after days in a flea-bitten prison uniform and then in this bloodstained jacket she is definitely going to burn, when something crunches beneath her feet.

Glass. Fragments of bottles. Her _clothes_ , strewn all over the floor, swimming in a puddle of what smells like champagne. Her nicest dress, her favourite perfume, even the contents of her fridge scattered in sodden pieces over the floor.

God, she really has nothing left. It almost hurts. It very nearly, almost truly, hurts.

Footsteps sound behind her, heavy and unsteady – Villanelle turns.

_Eve._


End file.
